Nearly half of Japan’s 20-year-olds have never been in a romantic relationship and 1 in 5 has never fallen in love, a survey by a marriage counseling firm says. The annual survey, conducted by O-net for the past 20 years, covered 600 fledgling adults ...

After telling Japan’s growing ranks of elderly they should “hurry up and die,” Finance Minister Taro Aso has turned his well-oiled gaffe gun on “people who don’t give birth.” The former prime minister said pensioners are not to blame for the spiraling social welfare ...

With the number of privately run nursery schools increasing in Japan, many such facilities are working to come up with novel services to survive, including original educational materials and English conversation classes. While the number of children on nursery waiting lists remains high, nursery ...

Over coffee and cake in a rural cafe in Kochi Prefecture, Hideyuki Tanaka, 40, plucked up the courage to speak with Eri, 14 years his junior. A pianist provided the ambience for the afternoon gathering of 18 singles, arranged by local government cupids, which ...

In Iran, free condoms and government-backed vasectomies are out, replaced by sermons praising larger families and discussions of even offering gold coins to the families of newborns. Having successfully curbed birthrates for two decades, Iran now is promoting a baby boom to help make ...

Alarmed by the nation’s dwindling birthrate, a government task force recently came up with a plan to distribute so-called women’s handbooks as a means of encouraging young women to have children. The plan, however, faced harsh criticism for treating pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing as ...

A government task force discussing measures to boost Japan’s low birthrate has scrapped an idea to give young women handbooks informing them of certain medical facts — including those pertaining to infertility — faced by some women in their late 30s. The handbook, tentatively ...

Daniel Dumas English instructor, 53 (American) The first thing I’d like to see is a rethink of policy regarding bicycle transportation. The use of bicycles should be encouraged and more parking areas should be created. As we learned on 3/11, bicycles can be very ...